


Wretched Word

by AnOddSock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Blood and Gore, Burns, Captivity, Collared Castiel (Supernatural), Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Powerlessness, Pre-Slash, Rescue, Torture, grace dampening magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:56:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21633283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOddSock/pseuds/AnOddSock
Summary: Sam gets good at begging, not that it helps or makes the demons stop. But sometimes it takes pain to reveal the biggest need of all.A.k.a A romantic rendezvous at the torture chamber.
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 22
Kudos: 90
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Wretched Word

**Author's Note:**

> For my Bad Things Happen Bingo Card for the square "Pleading"

Sam’s arm was on fire. He tossed his head and  _ screamed _ , throat already raw and aching, and choked on the sound that broke free. He breathed in fitful spasms as he tried to hold still, waiting for the pain to lessen. He didn’t dare open his eyes to see what the ruined skin looked like now.

He tried to wrench his head away when a hand grabbed his chin, tugged on his hair, and turned his face towards his outstretched right arm — strapped at the wrist and elbow to the wooden table. 

“No,” he mumbled.

“Look at it, or do you want me to burn out your eyes too?”

He looked up first into the malicious gaze of the demon, and snarled, but one more rough tug and he obliged and looked down at his mutilated flesh. It was red, inflamed beyond anything he ever remembered seeing on his own body and bleeding sluggishly. He held back a sob and his breath rattled in his chest.

It looked about as bad as it felt; agonising and horrifying.

For days now, days and days and days so many countless hours he’d endured it. It was always the same part of his arm — that one small section of his body between wrist and elbow — burned over and over. First with needles, then with brands, then with white hot knives, and now with the flame itself. They said it would be worse than working over his whole body, the repeated pain on top of already injured flesh. They were right.

He’d hoped for a while that eventually the heat would sear his nerves and everything would go numb. He’d been wrong about that. When they reached his nerve endings it just burned brighter like an electric current running up his arm and he’d screamed so long then he’d gone faint from lack of oxygen.

“Almost down to the bone here,” the second demon said conversationally, “that’s got to smart a bit.” Fingers pressed his arm, nudged and wiggled beside charcoal coloured skin and bile scoured his throat. He hunkered over the table top, hanging limply in the chair they’d brought him to sit on. All his other limbs were untied but he was too weak to do anything helpful with them.

He looked up with tear stained cheeks and red eyes and desperation. “Cas, please. Cas. Please, please, do something.”

He knew it was unfair to ask of Cas, to expect him to be able to do anything when they were both at the mercy of their captors, but he didn't know where else to turn. And besides, they wanted Sam to put on a good show, to really deliver on his screams and his pain and he was long past the point of being able to deny them; if he begged nicely enough they went a little easier on him, and he needed every bit of slack he could get.

Cas looked almost feral, chained about the neck like an animal as he pulled against the restraint like Sam’s life depended on it. Maybe it did. They didn’t have the information the demons wanted, Cas couldn’t make it stop even if he desired to. If only Cas could've lied, or bluffed, or pretended then he might be spared some pain, might get longer reprieves. 

It took a while before the demons decided to take another break, and they dumped Sam back by the wall where Cas was tethered. He slumped, sliding down and teetered close to Cas’s body. Cas guided him further so his head rested on Cas’s lap and he could stroke Sam’s sweat laden hair.

“Aww cute, look at them snuggling!” 

“Leave us be!” Cas demanded, and Sam flinched at the loud sound as it echoed near his ear. Cas curled around him, shielding him from view as the demons left them behind the locked door of the meat freezer, laughing all the while.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Sam.”

“I know.” He burrowed closer to Cas’s warmth, racked with shivers and fever pain.

“I’ll heal you, I promise, the moment this collar is off.”

Sam knew that too, Cas assured him every time. Pain was temporary. Pain was fleeting. This wouldn’t last. It wouldn’t.

“You can do it with a kiss,” he heard himself saying. “Make it all better.” His words were slurred, near indecipherable, but he meant it. He craved it, that touch that would feel like cool water and the intimacy he barely let himself hope for.

“If you like, I will oblige any whim.”

* * *

Sam was getting too weak to suffer much more, Cas knew it with certainty. Sam’s body would give out under the strain, and he could do nothing. The warding on the collar trapped him completely, rendered him powerless, and he knew it was only for the added humiliation that they restrained him with it, like he was an attack dog to be controlled.

Sam’s burned and scalded arm lay tenderly on the cold floor — they had expanded their macabre canvas over his elbow, creeping slowly towards his shoulder — and Cas was grateful that the walk in freezer wasn’t working properly. Adding frostbite to fire-burns would be worse — though it felt impossible that anything could be worse than this.

He gave Sam what comfort he could, soft touches and small sips of the water the demons left for them. He fed Sam from his fingers, bite by bite, whenever the demons deigned to provide food. No matter what he did it wasn't enough to help, not really. He was useless, and trapped; he couldn't stop them hurting Sam and he felt the burn of it in his essence like they tortured the very heart of him.

Sam begged openly now, no longer ashamed, unabashedly desperate. And he didn’t even beg for them to stop, he was cognisant enough to know that was useless. He just begged them to hurt him differently, choose a fresh spot, move the pain somewhere new.

_ Please, please, please _

_ I’ll do anything _

_ I can give you anything please don’t don’t don’t, not that, not again _

_ Please! _

A wicked sound, a wretched word, a woeful plea.

The demons paid him no mind, delighted in his screams and laughed as he went limp and glassy eyed and smacked his face when he checked out too long. And they asked the same meaningless questions about angel tablets and prophets and knowledge that Cas could not have answered with all the good will in the world.

“You will regret this, I will tear you limb from limb!” He yelled at them, but his threats were empty, and still Sam suffered.

Cas had never seen someone endure so much up close, so very brave and so utterly bereft.

* * *

Rescue came late, and long, and after much despairing. Sam was almost catatonic, curled up and shaking anytime he wasn’t spread out to be tortured. He’d stopped looking to Cas as a saviour days before, stopped holding out hope for Cas to pull some magic trick out of his sleeve. If he begged any more it was empty and soul deep, and directed at neither demon or angel, just the universe, and only because there was nothing else to do.

Dean busted down the door with Jack close on his heels, guns blazing and power radiating. The demons went up in curls of black smoke, or died where they stood and Sam laid still as stone, unaware of the change in their fates.

Dean ran to his brother and only Jack saw the pain in Castiel’s eyes, and freed his father first. Power crept back into the recesses of his being like water filling a dry creek bed, a sudden rush that rippled with growing urgency. His eyes turned star-bright blue and he demanded Dean move, and he did, with awe written clear across his face.

Sam’s wounded arm mended quickly, and he gasped back to awareness with a jolt; immediately upright, gasping, and wild about the eyes.

“Cas? Dean?”

“We got you out, we’ve got you. Come on up, big man, let’s get you home.” Dean soothed his brother easily.

Sam stumbled on his feet and Cas caught him, propped him up with all his strength and Sam smiled. 

“What did they want anyway?” Dean asked, after checking the coast was clear.

“Secrets from the angel tablet,” Sam croaked. 

“They seemed awfully well equipped to hide from us, for demons who wanted information, what else did they think more power could do for them?”

Sam shrugged, “Luckily we didn’t know a thing that they asked.”

Jack frowned, “It doesn’t seem very lucky?”

“Hey, if the bad guys can’t get what they want, we call that a win in this business,” Dean said as he urged them on. “You guys good, did they feed ya enough? I’ve got rations in the trunk. How’s your power Cas, did that collar do any lasting damage?”

Dean and Jack had a hundred, a thousand, questions. Sam leaned heavily on Cas beside the car, smiling weakly, and let Cas take the lead. At the first moment alone he turned in and tucked his head shyly beside Cas.

“You didn’t kiss me, I thought we had a deal?” Cas pulled away, shocked, and Sam grabbed for his lapels to keep him near. “Kinda got used to having you close. It seems weird now, when you’re far away.”

“I wasn’t sure you really wanted… I thought perhaps you were delirious, or… would change your mind.”

“Nope,” Sam replied simply, and shifted impossibly closer; until they were pressed together shoulder to hip. “I can beg you for it, if you like, I got pretty good at that.”

“No, no begging.” Cas’s eyes glowed blue and fierce as lightning. “You will never beg again, not if I can help it.”

“So kiss me, or I might not have a choice.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading, comments, kudos, and general flailing are always welcome!


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